National WW2 Memorial Dedication
Saturday morning was glorious...the sun was up, not a cloud in sight and the air was cool and dry. Patti had a race that morning (came in third overall female) and I took off for DC around 10:30 or so. I drove to a Metro station and took the metro train into DC. I got off metro at the Smithsonian exit and joined the throngs of crowds making their way to the viewing sites.
Along the way I chatted with several folks and ran into some other people who needed tickets. I had four so I gave up three and joined the increasingly larger mass of people, wheelchairs, police and Secret Service men slowly working our way east towards the monument. I had tickets for Site 2 which was along the reflecting pool. We could not actually see the event except via large-screen TV's(like you see at sporting events). The veterans I was with actually thought Bush's speech was flat, not very interesting and kinda second-rate compared to the other speakers. Lou (on the right), a KingFisher pilot (More on Lou here) from the USS Tennesse thought he should have hired Tom Brokaw's speech writer and George (on the left in Lou picture), a infantry soldier from the 81st Division (landed in the Phillippenes) kinda shrugged his shoulders and said something along the lines of "Well, he's never been good at this anyway".
We all agreed that the high point of the day was when they played Taps...Lou looked at me and said "Look at my arm!" He has goose pimples up and down his arm as did I...that was a incredibly powerful and emotional moment.
In front of us (we were in the shade of a huge Oak just south of the reflecting pool) sat two very old ladies. On their identical jackets were the words American Gold Star Mothers; Both of these ancient ladies had lost sons or brothers or family members in WW2 (families hung a red and white flag in their house window...on that flag were stars representing the number of family members serving in harms way. If you lost one of those loved ones you replaced the blue star with a Gold Star.
All in all it was a grand day...the weather was perfect and the crowds appreciative of all that was transpiring around them. THey gave out some goodies and I cobbled together a quick photoshop montage of them...the Hi Rez
is 900K, the Low Rez about 250k (high-res is a misnomer...my digital camera is not the best...but at least at my version of hi_res you can read the writing on things)
Along the way I chatted with several folks and ran into some other people who needed tickets. I had four so I gave up three and joined the increasingly larger mass of people, wheelchairs, police and Secret Service men slowly working our way east towards the monument. I had tickets for Site 2 which was along the reflecting pool. We could not actually see the event except via large-screen TV's(like you see at sporting events). The veterans I was with actually thought Bush's speech was flat, not very interesting and kinda second-rate compared to the other speakers. Lou (on the right), a KingFisher pilot (More on Lou here) from the USS Tennesse thought he should have hired Tom Brokaw's speech writer and George (on the left in Lou picture), a infantry soldier from the 81st Division (landed in the Phillippenes) kinda shrugged his shoulders and said something along the lines of "Well, he's never been good at this anyway".
We all agreed that the high point of the day was when they played Taps...Lou looked at me and said "Look at my arm!" He has goose pimples up and down his arm as did I...that was a incredibly powerful and emotional moment.
In front of us (we were in the shade of a huge Oak just south of the reflecting pool) sat two very old ladies. On their identical jackets were the words American Gold Star Mothers; Both of these ancient ladies had lost sons or brothers or family members in WW2 (families hung a red and white flag in their house window...on that flag were stars representing the number of family members serving in harms way. If you lost one of those loved ones you replaced the blue star with a Gold Star.
All in all it was a grand day...the weather was perfect and the crowds appreciative of all that was transpiring around them. THey gave out some goodies and I cobbled together a quick photoshop montage of them...the Hi Rez
is 900K, the Low Rez about 250k (high-res is a misnomer...my digital camera is not the best...but at least at my version of hi_res you can read the writing on things)
